Thomas Jefferson

From BillionQuotes

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third president of the United States (1801–1809), author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), a political philosopher, and one of the most influential founders of the United States.

1 Sourced
2 Attributed
3 Misattributed
- 3.1 Almost certainly spurious
4 Quotes of others about Jefferson
5 External links

[edit]

Sourced

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.
- Legal Argument (1770)

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written.
- Letter to Robert Skipwith (August 3, 1771)

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
- Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
- Letter to Peter Carr (August 19, 1785)

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
- Letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier (January 24, 1786)

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
- Letter to Dr. James Currie (January 28, 1786)

The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice & fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us . . . .
- Letter to Benjamin Hawkins (August 13, 1786)

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
- Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (January 16, 1787)

Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
- Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (January 16, 1787)

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
- Letter to James Madison (January 30, 1787); referring to Shays' Rebellion

What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.
- Letter to William Stevens Smith (November 13, 1787)

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.
- Letter to Alexander Donald (February 7, 1788)

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
- Letter to Richard Price (January 8, 1789)

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
- Letter to William Hunter (March 11, 1790)

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
- Letter to Lafayette (April 2, 1790)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
- Letter to Archibald Stuart (1791)

Let what will be said or done, preserve your sang-froid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perserverence, and soothing language.
- Letter to William Short (March 18, 1792)

Delay is preferable to error.
- Letter to George Washington (May 16, 1792)

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.
- Letter to William Carmichael and William Short (1793)

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
- Letter to Elbridge Gerry (May 13, 1797)

It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
- Letter to Arthur Campbell (1797)

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."
- From a letter of 1798, after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;
- The Kentucky Resolution (November 16, 1798)

Our citizens may be deceived for a while & have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light; still more perhaps to the taxgatherers; for it is not worth the while of our antirepublicans to risk themselves on any change of government, but a very expensive one. Reduce every department to economy, & there will be no temptation to them to betray their constituents.
- Letter to Archibald Stuart (May 14, 1799)

Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
- Letter to Tench Coxe (May 21, 1799)

To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
- Letter to William Green Mumford (June 18, 1799)

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
- Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) ; later published in The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill (1809)

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.
- Letter to Edward Dowse (April 19, 1803)

Whensoever hostile aggressions...require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.
- Letter to Andrew Jackson (December 3, 1806)

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
- Letter to John Norvell (June 11, 1807)

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.
- Letter to Diodati (1807)

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
- "To the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland" (March 31, 1809)

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.
- Letter to John Wyche (May 19, 1809)

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
- Letter to James Olgivie (August 4, 1811)

But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
- Letter to Charles Willson Peale (August 20, 1811)

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
- Letter to John W. Eppes (June 24, 1813)

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
- Letter to John Adams (October 28, 1813)

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
- Letter to Horatio G. Spafford (March 17, 1814)

The hour of emancipation is advancing. . . this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.
- Letter to Edward Coles (August 25, 1814)

I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
- Letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller (1814) who had been prosecuted for selling the book Sur la Création du Monde, un Systême d'Organisation Primitive by M. de Becourt, which Jefferson himself had purchased.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.
- Letter to Thomas Law (1814)

I cannot live without books.
- Letter to John Adams (June 10, 1815)

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
- Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (January 6, 1816)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
- Letter to Du Pont de Nemours (April 24, 1816)

I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
- Letter to William Plumer (July 21, 1816)

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.
- Letter to John Adams (August 1, 1816)

I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.
- Letter to George Logan (November 12, 1816)

There is an error into which most of the speculators on government have fallen, and which the well-known state of society of our Indians ought, before now, to have corrected. In their hypothesis of the origin of government, they suppose it to have commenced in the patriarchal or monarchical form. Our Indians are evidently in that state of nature which has passed the association of a single family... The Cherokees, the only tribe I know to be contemplating the establishment of regular laws, magistrates, and government, propose a government of representatives, elected from every town. But of all things, they least think of subjecting themselves to the will of one man.
- Letter to Francis W. Gilmer (1816)

Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
- Letter to Samuel Kercheval (1816)

I believe... that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
- Letter to John Adams (1816)

What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.
- Letter to John Adams (January 11, 1817) This statement has been referred to as "Jefferson's Axiom"

I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law.
- Letter to papal nuncio Count Dugnani (February 14, 1818)

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plentitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
- Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (1819)

But this momentous question [the Missouri Compromise], like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union.
- Letter to John Holmes (April 22, 1820)

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.
- Letter to William Charles Jarvis (September 28, 1820)

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Letter to William Roscoe (December 27, 1820)

That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.
- On the U.S. Congress, in his Autobiography (January 6, 1821)

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
- Letter to John Adams (September 12, 1821)

I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.
- Letter to Hugh P. Taylor (October 4, 1823)

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those that fear and distrust people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. (2) Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist; and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.
- Letter to Henry Lee (August 10, 1824)

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
- Letter to William Ludlow (September 6, 1824)

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
- "A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life" (February 21, 1825)

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
- "A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life" (February 21, 1825)

The good old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all.
- "Thoughts on Lotteries" (1826)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
- Letter to Roger C. Weightman, on the decision for Independence made in 1776, often quoted as if in reference solely to the document the Declaration of Independence (June 24, 1826)

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
- Letter to Roger C. Weightman, declining to attend July 4th ceremonies in Washington D.C. celebrating the 50th anniversary of Independence, because of his health. This was Jefferson's last letter. (June 24, 1826)

This is the Fourth?
- Last words (Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence)
- A few accounts declare that he asked on the night of the third: "Is it the fourth?" Most accounts declare the cited words were his last, and that he died a few hours before John Adams, whose last words are alleged to have been: "Thomas — Jefferson — still surv — " or "Thomas Jefferson still survives."

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
- Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a "a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk" with "the following inscription, & not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered." It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance.

[edit]

Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the erath the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the seperation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
- An early draft of the Declaration of Independence (June or July 1776); John Adams altered inalienable to unalienable in the copy that was actually signed, believing this to be more correct. An even earlier draft read: "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." (June 1776)

We must therefore...hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
- On the British

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

[edit]

Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785)

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
- Query 6

The Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them.
- Query 17

Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons.
- Query 17

Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effects of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
- Query 17

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
- Query 18

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
- Query 19

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

[edit]

Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

Letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France. (10 August 1787)

He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, & often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, &c. Consider every act of this kind, as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties & increase your worth.

In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Scan of the original page at The Library of Congress.

You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy & Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates.

Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

[edit]

First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801)

We are all Republicans — we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.

But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theocratic and visionary fear that this government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself?

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Still one thing more, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none...Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeus corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which we try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

[edit]

On the Judiciary

The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.
- Letter to Abigail Adams (1804)

To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps... and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
- Letter to William C. Jarvis (1820)

Having found from experience that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scarecrow, [the judiciary] consider themselves secure for life.
- Letter to Thomas Ritchie (1820)

[edit]

On religious matters

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
- Letter to Francis Hopkinson (March 13, 1789)

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
- Letter to Elbridge Gerry (1799)

They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
- On members of the clergy who sought to establish some form of "official" Christianity in the U.S. government. Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush (September 23, 1800)
- This has commonly been quoted as "I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." and "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Neither capitalization of "god" and "eternal", nor a comma before or after "eternal" are apparent in the original. Photograph of the original manuscript at the Library of Congress - LOC transcription

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
- Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT. (Jan. 1, 1802) This statement is the origin of the often used phrase "separation of Church and State".

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
- Letter to Edward Dowse (April 19, 1803)

He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
- Letter to William Canby (September 18, 1813)

Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.
- Letter to WIlliam Canby (September 18, 1813)

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
- Letter to Alexander von Humboldt (Dec. 6, 1813)
- Scanned letter at The Library of Congress
- Transcript at The Library of Congress

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
- Letter to Richard Rush (1813)

The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
- Letter to John Adams, on Christian scriptures (January 24, 1814)

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
- Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper (February 10, 1814)

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
- Letter to Horatio G. Spafford (March 17, 1814)

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
- Letter to Thomas Law (June 13, 1814)

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone. I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right.
- Letter to Miles King (September 26, 1814)

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my god and myself alone.
- Letter to John Adams (January 11, 1817)

You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.
- Letter to Ezra Stiles Ely (June 25, 1819)

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
- Letter to William Short (Oct. 31, 1819) on his admiration of the principles of Epicurus.

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
- Letter to William Short (April 13, 1820)

My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor. I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian... I say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus. We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the groveling authors who relate them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They shew that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their hands... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore. But that he might conscientiously believe himself inspired from above, is very possible... Excusing, therefore, on these considerations, those passages in the gospels which seem to bear marks of weakness in Jesus, ascribing to him what alone is consistent with the great and pure character of which the same writings furnish proofs, and to their proper authors their own trivialities and imbecilities, I think myself authorised to conclude the purity and distinction of his character, in opposition to the impostures which those authors would fix upon him; and that the postulate of my former letter is no more than is granted in all other historical works.
- Letter to William Short (August 4, 1820) on his reason for composing a Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus and referring to Jesus’ biographers, the Gospel writers

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
- Letter to John Adams (Aug. 15, 1820)

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
- Autobiography (1821), in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity . . . Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands of martyrs . . . The Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such person, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.
- Letter to James Smith (1822)

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god.
- Letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress)

The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter... But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
- Letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress)

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.
- Letter to General Alexander Smyth, on the book of Revelation (or The Apocalypse of St. John the Divine) (Jan. 17, 1825)

[edit]

On race

I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind.
- Notes on the State of Virginia (1787)

Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.
- Letter to Joel Barlow (8 October 1809); Jefferson here expresses an aversion to supporting the "fixed opinion" that blacks were not equal to whites in general mental capacities, which he asserts in his Notes on the State of Virginia he had advanced as "a suspicion only".

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
- Autobiography (1821) in notes describing some of the debates of 1779 on slavery. These comments reflect biases and assumptions about race that were common in his era.

Whatever be their degree of talents, it is no measure of their rights.
- Quoted in The Science and Politics of Racial Research by William H. Tucker (1994), p. 11

[edit]

On Canada

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent.

[edit]

Attributed

A little revolution now and then is a good thing; the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. (1787)

As pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.
- About Tadeusz Kościuszko

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Good wine is a necessity of life for me.

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.

Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art.

No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
- Variant: When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [black] people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion, has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

On matters of style, swim with the current. On matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and effects in this world that a two-penny duty of tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent. (1812)

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself…She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

When the press is free and every man can read, all is safe.

[edit]

Misattributed

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
- This has actually become a common paraphrase of a statement that is believed to have originated with Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
- A historian named Howard Zinn said this in an interview with TomPaine.com in July 2002 and it has been widely misattributed to Thomas Jefferson. The interview can be found here: http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/5908.html. The quote can be found in the first sentence of Mr. Zinn's first answer.
- Law professer Jim Lindgren of The Volokh Conspiracy has traced the possible origin of this saying back as far as the 11 November 1984 obituary of pacifist activist Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson in the Philadelphia Inquirer, quoting a 1965 interview. The direct quote there is: "Dissent from public policy can be the highest form of patriotism," she said in an interview in 1965. "I don't think democracy can survive without it, even though you may be crucified by it at times." According to the professor's research, the misattribution was popularized in the 1990's by ACLU president Nadine Strossen.

That government is best which governs least.
- Attributed to Jefferson by Henry David Thoreau, this statement is used in his essay on civil disobedience, but the quote has not been found in Jefferson's own writings; the statement may well have originated with Thoreau himself. It is also commonly attributed to Thomas Paine, perhaps because of its similarity in theme to many of his well documented expressions, such as "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."

[edit]

Almost certainly spurious

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
- See the Positive Atheism site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It is presented here only as a means of repudiating it as an exaggeration and distortion of Jefferson's views on several important matters that has been given some credence by the spread of this quotation by the uninformed or malicious. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative whole. Jefferson's own opinions on Jesus, God, Christianity and general opinions about them, were far more complex than is indicated in this almost certainly bogus tirade.

[edit]

Quotes of others about Jefferson

There is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a Civil War. Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.
- Written by Federalists in the Connecticut Courant [1]
- The Connecticut Courant became the Hartford Courant and apologised for the above quote on April 26, 1993.

[edit]